GREAT NEWS: There is now TWO STATE BILLS in the Massachusetts Legislature seeking to prohibit anticoagulant rodenticides (ARs).
They are:
S. 644/H. 965: An Act restricting the use of rodenticides in the environment
Sponsors: Representative Jim Hawkins and Senator Mike Moore
Status: Referred to Joint Committee on Environment and Natural Resources
WHAT CAN YOU DO TO SUPPORT THESE PROPOSED PIECES OF LEGISLATION? The best thing you can do is is CALL (don’t just email) your state Senator and Representative and request that they CO-SPONSOR one or both of these bill. Either leave a voicemail if you can or speak to a staffer. If they are already a co-sponsor, thank them. If not, let them know–in your own words–why this is important to you. Speak to the hawks or owls nesting in your neighborhoods, or the safety of your companion animals and children. Are your legislators still not responding to phone calls and co-sponsoring? Don’t know who your legislator is? You can find them here.
Then consider a visit to them during their constituent hours. This doesn’t require a trip to the State House. Most state legislators hold monthly meetings in places in and around their districts like local libraries and communities centers or coffee shops, and many of them also hold virtual hours on Zoom. If you can’t find that info on their website, call and ask a staffer.
When the bills have their first hearing, please submit testimony!
Synopsis (Courtesy of MSPCA)
Overview: This legislation would restrict the use of Anticoagulant Rodenticides (ARs) in Massachusetts to protect wildlife, pets, people, and the environment.
What this bill will do: This bill will end the registration and reregistration of anticoagulant rodenticides (ARs). This includes the first generation, or FGARs such as Chlorophacinone, Diphacinone, and Warfarin–and the second generation known as SGARs–which includes Brodifacoum, Bromadiolone Difenacoum, and Difethialone. The only exception in use would be if deemed necessary for a public health emergency by the Massachusetts Department of agriculture and resources (MDAR). This bill also gives the department the ability to establish a process and standards for the limited use of anticoagulant rodenticides by licensed applicators in public health emergencies.
ARs impact non-targeted pets and wildlife populations, such as birds of prey, who rely on the poisoned rodents as a food source. As a result, the cats and dogs, hawks, eagles, owls, and bobcats who are exposed often suffer the same fatal hemorrhaging as their meal.
While ARs are prohibited for residential consumer purchase in the Commonwealth, commercial use is allowed for licensed pesticide companies.
On the national level, please write to our US Representative Katherine Clark, as well as our US Senators, Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey.
Both bald eagles that died in Massachusetts were in Katherine Clark’s district. Additionally, New England Wildlife Centers, one of the largest wildlife veterinarian hospitals in the state, reported receiving a disproportionate amount of wildlife with rodenticide poisoning from in and around the Arlington area, so Clark’s district seems to be a ground zero for this problem.
Here is contact information:
For Katherine Clark: https://katherineclark.house.gov/email-me
For Elizabeth Warren:
https://www.warren.senate.gov/contact/shareyouropinion
For Edward Markey:
https://www.markey.senate.gov/contact/share-your-opinion
Some asks you can make of Clark, Warren and Markey:
- to become a champion of this issue
- to work with other interested legislators to draft or sponsor propose legislation that would ban or heavily restrict the use and availability of AR poisons, both online and for use by pest control professionals
- to pressure the EPA to pass stricter regulations on AR poisons–or better yet–to ban them altogether and remove their registration as an available rodenticide
- to fight against efforts by conservative legislators to pass federal laws both independent of and in the 2023 Farm Bill that would stop states and local municipalities from being able to restrict or regulate pesticides, including AR rodenticides (For more information, please read here and take the indicated action. If you are an elected or appointed city or town official, you can also sign this petition drafted by Beyond Pesticides).